Why writer-dancer Brontez Purnell has toughed it out in...

1of5Dancer Brontez Purnell rehearses for an upcoming piece while on the roof of Project Artaud in S.F.Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle

2of5Dancer Brontez Purnell (right) rehearses for an upcoming piece with Sophia Wang while on the roof of Project Artaud in S.F.Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle

3of5Dancer Brontez Purnell rehearses for an upcoming piece on the roof of Project Artaud in S.F.Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle

4of5Dancer Brontez Purnell (left) rehearses for an upcoming piece with Sophia Wang while on the roof of Project Artaud in S.F.Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle

5of5Dancer Brontez Purnell rehearses for an upcoming piece with Sophia Wang while on the roof of Project Artaud in S.F.Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle

The Bay Area in 2019 is often described as a playground for the wealthy. In this occasional Style series, we interview the artists, service people and nonprofit workers who hustle to make it work here despite the realities of rent and real estate. Does your love for the Bay Area outweigh the struggle? Have a story to share? Email style@sfchronicle.com.

Brontez Purnell’s writing is so wry and gut-baring that reading it makes you feel more reckless by proxy. As a fixture of the Oakland punk scene over the past two decades, Purnell is an artist whose talents refuse to be constrained to one field: He’s a musician (Gravy Train!!!, The Younger Lovers). In 2010 he founded an experimental dance and theater crew, the Brontez Purnell Dance Co. And though he’s a longtime zinemaker and writer, his work has finally begun garnering attention from the establishment in the past few years: Purnell’s novel “Since I Laid My Burden Down” won a 2018 Whiting Award for fiction, and last year the New York Times named him one of 32 essential “black male writers of our time.”

I caught up with Purnell recently at the Lab in the Mission, where he was meeting his dance company co-founder/“wife,” the artist Sophia Wang, for rehearsal. The pair have an upcoming residency at the Pieter Performance Space in Los Angeles. Purnell is simultaneously working to deliver the final manuscript of his next book, “100 Boyfriends.” “People hear the name and think it’s a rom-com, but it’s about gay male rejection, isolation and betrayal,” says Purnell with a half-hearted laugh. “It’s dark as f—.”

Chronicle: Tell me about your living situation(s) since moving to the Bay Area.

Purnell: I moved here in 2002, so this is my 17th year here. I’ve lived in San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland.

When I first moved here, the farthest west I’d ever been was Arkansas. I lived with 20 other kids in this warehouse in Oakland that (the band) Erase Errata started. That had a big effect on me. When you live with 20 other people, and there’s a beer machine and there are shows happening all the time — it made me feel like I could do anything I wanted.

Then I moved to Steve List’s warehouse (an Oakland punk house known as Sugar Mountain), and I lived there for 14 years. When I moved out I owed Steve $11,000, but then I got this grant to write my book so I was able to pay it back. When I gave him the last payment, he was like, “I never expected you to pay me back; I can’t believe this happened. I never kicked you out because I thought it was important for someone like you to have a place to live.” Being far from home, I think we adopt other parent figures. Sometimes they’re people who really care about you.

I’ve been in my current place near MLK (in Oakland) for five years. I live with four other people. Rent is $500.

Q: What keeps you here?

A: I have boyfriends in New York and Nashville, but every time I go there, I don’t think I would have the same type of social freedom I do here. To me, New York is ugly as f—. The people are beautiful, but the physical landscape of that place is ugly. I love the actual physical landscape of this place. When I bike here, there’s some point where I can see the bay or the Golden Gate Bridge. And the weather — it’s heaven here. I fight because I would not give this up without a fight. When will you ever get to be in heaven again?

People tell me, “Well, if you moved to L.A. or New York, your career could be more serious.” Who said I wanted a more serious career? I like my career as it is.

Q: How do you think the changing socioeconomics of the Bay Area have impacted the queer community since you’ve been here?

A: I don’t see as many 20-year-olds in the gay clubs. When I was in my 20s, it was a swarm of us. And now I’m 36 and I’m definitely not seeing 20-year-olds out.

But there’s always been this separation. This city, this land mass, feels like this boyfriend that I never really could have but I’m always trying to catch up to.

There’s a black gay men’s gathering in West Oakland that I went to recently, and for the first time ever I was in this room with 20 other professional black gay men. I was like, oh, these are my potential husbands (laughs). But 95 percent of the room was like, “I’m leaving the Bay Area in the next year because I need to find a place to be.” These were lawyers, doctors, artists stating what they needed to survive, and saying they needed to go somewhere else to get it. I was the only one saying, “I’m gonna die here. I’m gonna be here for the rest of my life.”

Q: What advice do you have for other artists trying to make it work here?

A: You better have rich parents (laughs.) No, do you know (photojournalist and gay rights activist) Daniel Nicoletta? I interviewed him, and he was like, “It’s always been hard. Even in the 1970s, when things were cheap. In order to do something, you have to be possessed by it.” If you aren’t possessed, you’re not gonna make it.